Friday, January 27, 2012

I am watching Retsupurae's Mortal Kombat Mythologies video where Sub-Zero is going through the four elemental temples. None of the ideas are particularly inspired but why not steal the easy stuff too.

1. Water temple could be completely underwater (lake or ocean bed) or it could just be a sewer level.

2. Fire temple has metal rooms that grow increasingly hot. Early rooms could have metal ceilings, then walls, and finally floors. The ceilings and walls cause fatigue (and damage if you got too close to the walls) while the floors would damage and sear characters due to the direct contact and heat convection.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

This idea stems from part of a D&D cartoon episode (not really explored there but watching it reminded me) and one of my brother's favorite dungeon locale ideas.

My brother was really interested in created a dungeon called Magnet Mountain. As the name suggests, the mountain would contain a large iron core that was magnetized, and the deeper you went into the dungeon, the stronger the magnetic attraction. This would make fighting with metal weapons difficult and just walking in metal armor very difficult. He mostly meant it as a surprise/difficulty rather than as I intend it below.

I anticipate making certain areas of Trokair difficult, if not impossible, to explore with certain equipment or as a certain class as well as areas that require specific measures in order to survive the environment. Examples include the abovementioned Magnet Mountain, areas inhabited by copious rust monsters (again, no metal equipment), an aerie or pass blustered by constant wind (no ranged attacks, difficult to stay standing), an enchanted glade that will not suffer one to tread the grass (cannot touch the ground), a tomb wherein nothing may breathe (poisonous gas or a magical curse), and a wizard's tower containing an idol that devours magic (no spells or magic items).

This would feed into player-driven research of these mythical areas as well as diversifying parties (as the original Western Marches campaign had a flexible player base with different people showing up to each session).

There are probably lots of these that I have forgotten as I watched the episodes over the course of days, even weeks.

Season 1, Episode 11 - The Box

A magic chest that, when opened, reveals a portal to another world or pocket dimension. The portal changes with the chest's location, so to access a particular world/dimension, the chest must be placed in the correct spot. Particular worlds have their own portal locations throughout the world. If the chest is not palced in a portal spot, then whatever is placed inside at that location remains in a pocket dimension until the chest is once more opened in that spot. What this means is that if you put something in the chest, then moved the chest a few feet to the side, then it would be empty when you opened it.